In The Pipeline: CoStar Development & Construction News for Jan. 22 - 28

Sunset Hopes to Create New Downtown in Bucolic Bay Area Suburb

San Ramon, CA, in the San Francisco Bay Area's Contra Costa County is headquarters to such corporate giants as Chevron, AT&T and Robert Half International. What it does not have is a downtown, but locally based Sunset Development Co. hopes to build one over the next couple of years.

Sunset and its late founder, Masud Mehran, built the 585-acre Bishop Ranch into one of the country's most prestigious business parks in the 1980s. Mehan's grandson, Alex Mehan, Jr., now president and COO, plans to lead the next family effort, an ambitious plan to create City Center, a new downtown for the East Bay suburban community comprised of 500,000 square feet of retail and about 500 new residential units.

This week, a joint venture of Sunset Development and MetLife Inc. purchased the nearly 2-million-square-foot AT&T campus at 2600 Camino Ramon in San Ramon for a reported price of more than $250 million.

Mehan said the project’s proximity to City Center and San Ramon’s North Camino Ramon Specific Plan area provides numerous master-planning opportunities that will benefit all tenants and visitors of Bishop Ranch.”
In The Pipeline is a column on significant acquisitions of commercial land for sale, and other transactions and trends affecting office, industrial, flex, multifamily, mixed-use, hotel and public works developers. Send us news leads about your new commercial real estate project -- and sign up to be added to our distribution list to receive future In the Pipeline columns by e-mail.
Sunset Development in 1983 had sold the undeveloped property to Pacific Bell, now owned by AT&T, and began constructing what would become PacBell's corporate and later, AT&T's West Coast headquarters.

The venture, 49% owned by MetLife, plans to redevelop and modernize the project originally designed by Skidmore Owings and Merrill, and create large blocks of space in the supply challenged San Francisco Bay Area office market beginning this year. AT&T will lease back a "significant" portion said to be around 900,000 square feet of the property.

Kilroy to Develop Luxury Hollywood Apt Tower

Kilroy Realty Corp. (NYSE: KRC) unveiled plans for a 20-story luxury residential tower to anchor Columbia Square, the $385 million mixed-use project now under construction on the site of the historic CBS broadcast facility on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood.

The 200-unit Residences at Columbia Square will include a mix of high-end rental and "extended stay" apartment homes catering to traveling professionals. The project will also include four individually designed penthouse units of up to 4,000 square feet.

The 4.7 acre-Columbia Square project at 6121 Sunset Blvd. also will include 350,000 square feet of new and 80,000 square feet of renovated creative office and studio space, plus about 20,000 square feet of retail fronting Sunset Boulevard.

The Kor Group, a Los Angeles-based development and management firm, is collaborating with Kilroy Realty on project programming, design and branding and will stay on to manage the project after construction is completed in the spring of 2016.

office space, with another 5.4 million square feet of mostly preleased space under construction.